District of Columbia Statehood Movement - History

History

Some aspects of the D.C. statehood agenda were achieved with the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, passed in 1973 (home rule granted the city an elected mayor and city council). Still more were encompassed in the District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment, which passed Congress in 1978 but failed to be ratified by a sufficient number of states to become an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The deadline for ratification of the D.C. Voting Rights Amendment passed on August 22, 1985.

Two years later, in 1980, local citizens passed the District of Columbia Statehood Constitutional Convention of 1979 law, calling for a constitutional convention for a new state. In 1982, voters ratified the constitution of the state. Since that time, legislation to enact this proposed state constitution has routinely been introduced in Congress, but has never been passed.

"New Columbia" is the name of the proposed U.S. state that would be created by the admission of the District of Columbia into the United States as the 51st state according to legislation offered starting in the 98th Congress in 1983 and routinely re-introduced in succeeding Congresses. The Congressional legislation was triggered by the provisional D.C. Statehood constitution that Washington, D.C., voters adopted in November 1982.

The campaign for statehood stalled after the District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment failed in 1985 because it did not receive the required ratification by the legislatures of at least 38 of the 50 states within the required seven years of the amendment's submission by the 95th Congress. In 1987, another constitution was drafted, which again referred to the proposed state as New Columbia- the name is still closely associated with the movement today. The last serious debate on the issue in Congress took place in November 1993, when D.C. statehood was defeated in the House of Representatives by a vote of 277 to 153.